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A BIOGRAPHY
219
through the process of natural selection. I find that the highest
perfection would be the power to die quickly and easily. From
this standpoint humanity has decidedly retrograded. Insects
and the lower animals can never choose to die. An articulated
animal can suffer unheard-of tortures without ceasing to exist.
But the higher you rise in the animal scale the easier is the
transit. In a bird, a wild animal, a lion, or a tiger, almost
every illness is fatal. They have either the full enjoyment of
life—or else death, but no suffering. Man has reapproached
the insect. Many of my acquaintances make me involuntarily
think of insects with wings torn off, the different segments of
their bodies crushed, or their legs and feet injured. Yet, poor
things, they cannot decide to die. Forgive me for writing to
you in such low spirits. I am really in a very gloomy mood. I
feel no desire to work. I have not yet been able to settle down
to prepare my lectures for the next term. But I have pondered
much over the following problem. [And here a mathematical
proposition is given.]
From the same letter I quote again:
I have received from your sister, as a Christmas present, an
article by Strindberg, in which he proves, as decidedly as that
two and two make four, what a monstrosity is a woman who is
a professor of mathematics, and how unnecessary, injurious, and
out of place she is. I think he is right au fond, only I wish he
would prove clearly that there were plenty of mathematicians in
Sweden better than I am, and that it was only galanterie which
made them select me !
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